The invention is generally related to floating offshore structures and more particularly to cylindrical hulls or cylindrical sections of hulls.
The offshore oil and gas industry utilizes various forms of floating systems to provide “platforms” from which to drill for and produce hydrocarbons in water depths for which fixed platforms, jack-up rigs, and other bottom-founded systems are comparatively less economical or not technically feasible. The most common floating systems used for these purposes are Spar Platforms (Spars), Tension Leg Platforms (TLPs), Semi-Submersible Platforms (Semis), and traditional ship forms (Ships). All of these systems use some form of stiffened plate construction to create their hulls. The present invention generally applies to those systems, or portions of those systems, in which the stiffened plate section is cylindrical, in the broad sense of the term. Additional aspects of the invention apply particularly to cylindrical hulls that are circular in cross section. Circular cylindrical hulls are most commonly characteristic of Spars, Mono-column TLPs, and legs (columns) of Semis.
In the prior art, the structural arrangements and methods of assembly are based on ship design practices developed over many years. In these systems, the shell plate or structural skin is first stiffened in the longitudinal direction of the cylinder, usually with smaller elements such as structural angles or bulb tees. This plate, stiffened in one direction, is then formed into a full cylinder or a section of a cylinder with these stiffeners parallel to the centerline of the cylinder. Whether the form is curved or flat-sided, the shape of the cylinder is locked in place using girders or frames oriented transversely to these longitudinal stiffeners. These frames are located at relatively uniform intervals in order to limit the spans of the stiffeners to acceptable distances. The spans of these girders and frames themselves may be shortened using intermediate supports, as determined by the designer, in order to optimize the design by choosing to fabricate the extra supports instead of fabricating larger girders or frames for longer spans.
The spacing of the longitudinal stiffeners is based on 1) a minimum distance required for access between the stiffeners for welding to the shell plate (approximately 22 to 26 inches) and 2) a balance between shell plate thickness and stiffener spacing for the plate-buckling checks. The frames or girders transverse to the stiffeners are spaced at least four feet apart for in-service inspection access and up to eight feet depending upon how the design engineer elects to balance the stiffener sizing with the girder spacing.
Like all floating systems, cylindrical hulls are divided into watertight compartments in order to accommodate specified amounts of damage (flooding) without sinking or capsizing. With the exception of a specialized version of the Spar concept that uses a grouping of smaller diameter, circular cylinders to create much of its compartmentation, the sections of the cylindrical hulls are divided into compartments by watertight flats and bulkheads. These terms may have somewhat different meanings in Spar hulls since these hulls have cylinders that float vertically in service compared to ship hulls that float horizontally. In Spars, TLPs, and other deep-draft columned hulls, the flats are perpendicular to the longitudinal stiffeners and the bulkheads are parallel to these stiffeners, while in ships they are the opposite. The descriptions herein will use the terms as applied to Spars and other vessels with vertically oriented cylindrical sections.
Carried over from ship design practices of the prior art, the longitudinal stiffeners are made structurally continuous through, or across, the flats so the stiffeners can be considered to act together structurally with the shell plate when computing the total bending capacity for the cylinder. This is accomplished either by making the stiffeners pass continuously through the flats or by stopping the stiffeners short of the flats and adding brackets on either side that replace the structural continuity that was lost in stopping the stiffeners. When the stiffeners pass through a flat, the holes in the flat have to be closed up to maintain the flat's watertight integrity. When the stiffeners do not pass through the flat, a great number of brackets must be added and these brackets must align axially across the flat. Both approaches are very labor intensive and thus very costly.
In ships, where the design is largely controlled by loadings from longitudinal bending rather than from hydrostatics, this continuity of the stiffeners over the length of the shell plate is structurally warranted. In 1) vertically oriented, single cylinder hulls, 2) in multi-leg TLPs and 3) Semis with columns and pontoons submerged quite deep compared to ship drafts, loadings from hydrostatics, instead of loading from longitudinal bending, control much of the sizing of the hull structure. For these floating systems, the structural continuity of the stiffeners, which is so valuable in ship design, is not particularly valuable in non-ship-type hulls. However, in the prior art, this fundamental difference in loadings has not been reflected in the design of the Spar and similar cylindrical hulls.
FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate cross sections of a prior art, cylindrical, Spar hull construction arrangement. A flat-sided, flooded center well 100 that is square or rectangular in shape is provided to accommodate a regular array of risers. Radial bulkheads 180 connect the corners of the center well 100 to the outer cylindrical shell and extend the full height of the cylinder. The longitudinal stiffeners 120 of the outer-shell, center well shell, and radial bulkhead shells are continuous and pass through the girders 140, and also the flats 160 that separate the cylinder into water tight compartments. Because the compartments must be water tight, any passages provided in the plates 160 to allow continuity of the longitudinal stiffeners 120 must be sealed after assembly. This requires a large amount of labor and also increases the risk of a leak due to the large number of areas that must be sealed by welding.
The radial bulkheads 180 create very stiff points of support for the girders 140 on the outer-shell. Under the dominant loading, which is hydrostatic, these supports inadvertently cause these girders to act as bending elements spanning between these supports and, in the case of circular cylinders, prevent them from acting far more efficiently as rings in compression. Since the girders 140 are acting in “beam action” instead of acting as compression rings, the capacity of the shell plate in circular cylinders to carry hydrostatic loadings is also greatly under utilized since only part of the plate is effective as the compression flange of the girders (“effective width”).
The straight sides 200 of the center well 100 necessarily cause the girders 140 of the center well 100 to act as bending elements under the dominant hydrostatic loadings. The radial bulkheads 180 themselves only see hydrostatic loading in the circumstances where an adjacent compartment floods but, in such circumstances, the girders also act as bending elements spanning between the center well shell and outer-shell. All the girders for these shells and bulkheads must be located in the same horizontal plane so their end terminations can be tied together to provide structural continuity. Consequently, these end terminations have complex curved transitions where they join each other. These very labor-intensive transitions are required to mitigate “hot-spot” stresses at these highly loaded locations but they only reduce, not eliminate, the extent of these stresses. As a result, additional labor-intensive insert plates are normally included in the girder webs to reduce the remaining hot-spot stresses to values below stress allowables. “Tripping brackets” 220 (out-of-plane gusset-type lateral bracing for the girders) are added to brace the girders against torsional buckling.
The arrangement of the structural framing for cylindrical hulls in the prior art directly impacts the plan for the fabrication of sub assemblies and the erection of the full hull. In the prior art of Spar hulls, the cylindrical tanks are divided into sections (sub-assemblies), both in plan (with radial bulkheads) and longitudinally (with flats). These portions of the cylinder are pre-fabricated in jigs and then moved to the final assembly site where they are joined to make full circular sections. These sub-assemblies are normally constructed on their side primarily to use the weight of the section to conform the outer-shell to the curvature of the jig or form. These sub-assemblies are removed from the jigs in an advanced state of structural completion and rotated one hundred eighty degrees to complete the pre-outfitting on the outer-shell and then rotated again to be joined into the hull cylinder, which is assembled on its side. The cylindrical columns for Semis and TLPs are normally assembled vertically while the pontoon cylinders for Semi's and cylinders for Spars are normally assembled horizontally. Assembling cylinders when they are supported on one side by the fabrication supports requires the sub-assemblies to be very stiff to avoid unacceptable distortion of the lower section as the other sections above the lower section are added. While these sections are naturally very stiff when made as quadrants in the jigs and thus amenable to the loadings from horizontal assembly, this stiffness works against the need for flexibility to fit the sections together. The result is a contradiction in the stiffness requirements of erection handling versus fit-up that complicates the assembly process.